course at the motels there isnt any phonograph or tape
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recorder. Id like to hear some good string quartet or
maybe old folk songs well sung for music hath charms
to soothe the savage breast. Theres an old Edison at the
house where Im staying now and what do you know
they have a record of a song you and I used to sing
together Theres a Long Long Trail A Winding. Its about
the newest record in this house. Ill play it again soon
thinking of you Mary my sister. O there is a long long
night of waiting.
“ Mary right now Im at a big fine house where the
people have gone away for awhile and I watch the house
for them and keep some of the rooms warm. Let me
assure you Mary I wont take anything from this good
old house when I go. These are nice people I know and
I just came in out of the storm and Im very found of
their 3 sweet little girls. I remember what you looked
like when I ran way first and you looked like one of
them called Alice. The one I like best though is Allegra
because she makes mischief and laughs a lot but is
innocent.
“ I came here just yesterday but it seems as if Id lived
in this house before but of course I couldnt have and I
feel at home here. Nothing in this house could scare
me much. You might not like it Mary because of little
noises and glimpses you get but its a lovely house and
as you know I like old places that have been lived in
lots.
“ By the way Mary once upon a time Father O’Malley told me that to the Lord all time is eternally present.
I think this means everything that happens in the world
in any day goes on all at once. So God sees what went
on in this house long ago and whats going on in this
house today all at the same time. Its just as well we
dont see through Gods eyes because then wed know
everything thats going to happen to us and because I ’m
such a sinner I dont want to know. Father O ’Malley
says that God may forgive me everything and have
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something special in store for me but I dont think so
because why should He?
“ And Father O ’Malley says that maybe some people
work out their Purgatory here on earth and I might be
one of these. He says we are spirits in the prisonhouse
of the body which is like we were serving Time in the
world here below and maybe God forgave me long ago
and Im just waiting my time and paying for what I did
and it will be alright in the end. Or maybe Im being
given some second chance to set things right but as
Father O ’Malley put it to do that Id have to fortify my
Will and do some Signal Act of contrition. Father
O’Malley even says I might not have to do the Act
actually if only I just made up my mind to do it really
and truly because what God counts is the intention. But
I think people who are in Purgatory must know they
are climbing up and have hope and Mary I think Im
going down down down even though Ive stayed out of
prisons some time now.
“ Father O ’Malley tells me that for everybody the
battle is won or lost already in Gods sight and that
though Satan thinks he has a good chance to conquer
actually Satan has lost forever but doesnt know it. Mary
I never did anybody any good but only harm to ones
that loved me. If just once before I die I could do one
Signal Act that was truly good then God might love me
and let me have the Beatific Vision. Yet Mary I know
Im weak of will and a coward and lazy and Ive missed
my chance forever.
“ Well Mary my only sister Ive bored you long
enough and I just wanted to say hello and tell you to
be of good cheer. Im sorry I whined and complained
like a little boy about my health because Im still strong
and deserve all the pain I get. Mary if you can forgive
your big brother who never grew up please pray for me
some time because nobody else does except possibly
Father O ’Malley when he isnt busy with other prayers.
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I pray for Mother every night and every other night for
you and once a month for Dad. You were a good little
girl and sweet. Now I will say good bye and ask your
pardon for bothering you with my foolishness. Also Im
sorry your friends found out I was just a hobo when I
was with you 9 years ago and I dont blame you for
being angry with me then for talking too much and I
know I wasnt fit to lodge in your house. There arent
many of us old real hobos left only beatniks and such
that cant walk or chop wood and I guess that is just as
well. It is a degrading life Mary but I cant stop walking
down that long long trail not knowing where it ends.
“ Your Loving Brother
“ Francis (Frank)
“ P.S.: I dont wish to mislead so I will add Mary that
the people who own this house didnt exactly
ask me in but its alright because I wont do any
harm here but a little good if I can. Good night
again Mary. ’ ’
Now he needed an envelope, but he had forgotten to take
one from the last motel, where the Presbyterian minister had
put him up. There must be some in Tamarack House, and
one would not be missed, and that would not be very wrong
because he would take nothing else. He found no envelopes
in the drawer of the library table: so he went up the stairs
and almost knocked at the closed door of Allegra’s Room.
Foolish! He opened the door gently.
He had admired Allegra’s small rosewood desk. In its
drawer was a leather letter-folder, the kind with a blotter, he
found, and in the folder were several small pages, in a woman’s hand, a trifle shaky. He started to sit down to read Allegra’s letter that was never sent to anybody, but it passed through his mind that his great body might break the delicate
rosewood chair that belonged to Allegra, so he read the letter
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standing. It was dated January 14, 1969. On that birthday of
his, he had been in Joliet prison.
How beautifully Allegra wrote!
“ Darling Celia,
“ This is a lonely day at Tamarack House, just fifty-
four years after your great-great-grandfather the General died, so I am writing to my grand-niece to tell you how much I hope you will be able to come up to Anthony ville and stay with me next summer—if I still am here. The doctor says that only God knows whether I
will be. Your grandmother wants me to come down
your way to stay with her for the rest of this winter, but
I can’t bear to leave Tamarack House at my age, for
they might have to put me in a rest-home down there
and then I wouldn’t see this old house again.
“ I am all right, really, because kind Mr. Connor
looks in every day, and Mrs. Williams comes every
other day to clean. I am not sick, my little girl
, but
simply older than my years, and running down. When
you come up next summer, God willing, I will make
you that soft toast you like, and perhaps Mr. Connor
will turn the crank for the ice-cream, and I may try to
make some preserves with you to help me.
“ You weren’t lonely, were you, when you stayed with
me last summer for a whole month? Of course there
are fewer than a hundred people left in Anthonyville
now, and most of those are old. They say that there will
be practically nobody living in the town a few years
from now, when the new highway is completed and the
old one is abandoned. There were more than two thousand people here in town and roundabout, a few years after the General built Tamarack House! But first the
lumber industry gave out, and then the mines were exhausted, and the prison-break in 1915 scared many away forever. There are no passenger trains now, and they
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say the railway line will be pulled out altogether when
the new freeway—they have just begun building it to
the east—is ready for traffic. But we still have the maples and the tamaracks, and there are ever so many raccoons and opossums and squirrels for you to watch—
and a lynx, I think, and an otter or two, and many deer.
“ Celia, last summer you asked me about the General’s death and all the things that happened then, because you had heard something of them from your Grandmother Edith. But I didn’t wish to frighten you, so I didn’t tell you everything. You are older now, and you
have a right to know, because when you grow up you
will be one of the trustees of the Anthony Family Trust,
and then this old house will be in your charge when I
am gone. Tamarack House is not at all frightening, except a little in the morning on every January 14. I do hope that you and the other trustees will keep the house
always, with the money that Father left to me—he was
good at making money, even though the forests vanished and the mines failed, by his investments in Chicago—and which I am leaving to the Family Trust. I ’ve kept the house just as it was, for the sake of the General’s memory and because I love it that way.
“ You asked just what happened on January 14, 1915.
There were seven people who slept in the house that
month—not counting Cook and Cynthia (who was a
kind of nannie to us girls and also cleaned), because
they slept at their houses in the village. In the house,
of course, was the General, my grandfather, your great-
great-grandfather, who was nearly eighty years old.
Then there were Father and Mama, and the three of us
little sisters, and dear Frank.
“ Alice and sometimes even that baby Edith used to
tease me in those days by screaming, ‘Frank’s Allegra’s
sweetheart! Frank’s Allegra’s sweetheart!’ I used to
chase them, but I suppose it was true: he liked me best.
Of course he was about sixty years old, though not so
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old as I am now, and I was a little thing. He used to
take me through the swamps and show me the muskrats’ houses. The first time he took me on such a trip, Mama raised her eyebrows when he was out of the
room, but the General said, ‘I ’ll warrant Frank; I have
his papers.’ Alice and Edith might just as well have
shouted, ‘Frank’s Allegra’s slave!’ He read to me—oh,
Robert Louis Stevenson’s poems and all sorts of books.
I never had another sweetheart, partly because almost
all the young men left AnthonyvUle as I grew up when
there was no work for them here, and the ones that
remained didn’t please Mama.
“ We three sisters used to play Creepmouse with
Frank, I remember well. We would be the Creepmice,
and would sneak up and scare him when he wasn’t
watching, and he would pretend to be terrified. He made
up a little song for us—or, rather, he put words to some
tune he had borrowed:
‘Down, down, down in Creepmouse Town
All the lamps are low,
And the little rodent feet
Softly come and go
‘There’s a rat in Creepmouse Town
And a bat or two:
Everything in Creepmouse Town
Would swiftly frighten you!’
“ Do you remember, Celia, that the General was State
Supervisor of Prisons and Reformatories for time out
of mind? He was a good architect, too, and designed
Anthonyville State Prison, without taking any fee for
himself, as a model prison. Some people in the capital
said that he did it to give employment to his county,
but really it was because the site was so isolated that it
would be difficult for convicts to escape.
“ The General knew Frank’s last name, but he never
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told the rest of us. Frank had been in Anthonyville
State Prison at one time, and later other prisons, and
the General had taken him out of one of those other
prisons on parole, having known Frank when he was
locked up at Anthonyville. I never learned what Frank
had done to be sentenced to prison, but he was gentle
with me and everybody else, until that early morning
of January 14.
“ The General was amused by Frank, and said that
Frank would be better off with us than anywhere else.
So Frank became our hired man, and chopped the firewood for us, and kept the fires going in the stoves and fireplaces, and sometimes served at dinner. In summer
he was supposed to scythe the lawns, but of course
summer didn’t come. Frank arrived by train at Anthonyville Station in October, and we gave him the little room at the top of the house.
“ Well, on January 12 Father went off to Chicago on
business. We still had the General. Every night he
barred the shutters on the ground floor, going round to
all the rooms by himself. Mama knew he did it because
there was a rumor that some life convicts at the Prison
‘had it in’ for the Supervisor of Prisons, although the
General had retired five years earlier. Also they may
have thought he kept a lot of money in the house—when
actually, what with the timber gone and the mines going, in those times we were rather hard pressed and certainly kept our money in the bank at Duluth. But we
girls didn’t know why the General closed the shutters,
except that it was one of the General’s rituals. Besides,
Anthonyville State Prison was supposed to be escape-
proof. It was just that the General always took precautions, though ever so brave.
“ Just before dawn, Celia, on the cold morning of
January 14, 1915, we all were waked by the siren of the
Prison, and we all rushed downstairs in our nightclothes, and we could see that part of the Prison was
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afire. Oh, the sky was red! The General tried to telephone the Prison, but he couldn’t get through, and later it turned out that the lines had been cut.
“ Next—it all happened so swiftly—we heard shouting somewhere down Main Street, and then guns went off. The General knew what that meant. He had got his
trousers and his boots on, and now he s
truggled with
his old military overcoat, and he took his old army
revolver. ‘Lock the door behind me, girl.’ he told
Mama. She cried and tried to pull him back inside, but
he went down into the snow, nearly eighty though he
was.
‘ ‘Only three or four minutes later, we heard the shots.
The General had met the convicts at the gate. It was
still dark, and the General had cataracts on his eyes.
They say he fired first, and missed. Those bad men had
broken into Mr. Emmons’s store and taken guns and
axes and whiskey. They shot the General—shot him
again and again and again.
“ The next thing we knew, they were chopping at our
front door with axes. Mama hugged us.
“ Celia dear, writing all this has made me so silly! I
feel a little odd, so I must go lie down for an hour or
two before telling you the rest. Celia, I do hope you
will love this old house as much as I have. If I ’m not
here when you come up, remember that where I have
gone I will know the General and Father and Mama
and Alice and poor dear Frank, and will be ever so
happy with them. Be a good little gift, my Celia.”
The letter ended there, unsigned.
Frank clumped downstairs to the Sunday parlor. He was
crying, for the first time since he had fought that professional
heavyweight on October 19, 1943. Allegra’s letter—if only
she’d finished it! What had happened to those little girls, and
Mama, and that other Frank? He thought of something from
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the Holy Bible: “ It were better for him that a millstone were
hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he
should offend one of these little ones.”
Already it was almost evening. He lit the wick in the
cranberry-glass lamp that hung from the middle of the parlor
ceiling, standing on a chair to reach it. Why not enjoy more
light? On a whim, he arranged upon the round table four
silver candlesticks that had rested above the fireplace. He
needed three more, and those he fetched from the dining
room. He lit every candle in the circle: one for the General,
one for Father, one for Mama, one for Alice, one for Allegra,
one for Edith—one for Frank.
The dear names of those litde girls! He might as well recite
The Color of Evil - The Dark Descent V1 (1991) Page 14
